boos

Liverpool fan favourites Rafa Benitez and Pepe Reina have been officially presented to fans at their new club Napoli. Former Anfield boss Benitez and his regular goalkeeper were welcomed to the Serie A club, along with former Real Madrid striker Gonzalo Higuain. Benitez had a starkly different start than he had in his last job.

Liverpool striker Luis Suarez was quite rightly disappointed at booing during Uruguay's national
anthem. But he's got completely the wrong end of the stick when it comes to guessing why he was
booed. The Uruguayan anthem was interrupted ahead of last night's Olympic match against Great
Britain when Suarez's image flashed up on the big [.

Shambles in Shanghai: Tigana, Tantrums and Anelka as manager is a post from: Just Football

by Andrew Crawford

The Chinese Super League (CSL) is once again watching its most noisy tenant,
Shanghai Shenhua, soak up all the attention. Its big name manager, Jean
Tigana is gone, replaced, or rather deposed, in headline-grabbing style by Nicolas
Anelka, who will now try to rescue the club from its plunge into the bottom half of the
league.

Mario Balotelli busted into Andrea Stramaccioni's press conference unannounced last week and
against Sunderland yesterday he tried hijacking Kolarov's free kick. Lots of jostling and pushing
as Nigel de Jong tried crowding him out till finally Vincent Kompany, City's captain having had
enough told him to take a hike.

Kevin Phillips says the boos from fans of former club Watford spurred him on as he secured promotion to the Premier League for Crystal Palace. The veteran striker started his long career at Vicarage Road, but was not given a warm reception by the Hornets supporters at Wembley. And they probably like him even less [.

With some distance between Saturday's win over Everton in the FA Cup semi-final, we can turn our
attention to the weekend and Liverpool's return to Premier League action. For all their success in
domestic cup competition, league performances have been all over the map, and this weekend's
match-up promises to have a healthy dose of awkward to go with the uncertainty of which version of
Liverpool we'll be watching come Sunday.

Reina let's the occasion get the better of him...Liverpool fell
to a 6th defeat out of 7 league games on April Fool's day as Papiss Cisse confidently put two past
the later dismissed Pepe Reina. In an embarrassing display which actually began with a lively start
from Liverpool, fans were left completely deflated as they made their way back from St James' Park.

Chelsea lost the chance to consolidate their fourth place position in the league yesterday after
they were humbled 2-0 by Everton at Goodison Park. Goals from Steven Pienaar and Denis
Stracqualursi condemned Villas-Boas to his 6 loss of the season and saw Arsenal overtake them into
4th place after a 2-1 away over Sunderland.

Injured Manchester United players Ashley Young and Darren Fletcher made it a family day out to
Old Trafford on Saturday.

Ashley brought his adorable 5-year-old son Tyler to United's match against Bolton, although
Tyler probably just played Transformers or dinosaurs in the on-site creche while daddy hobnobbed
with the big fellas.

New year celebrations for Chelsea fans were cancelled after the Blues suffered a humiliating 3-1
home loss to Aston Villa yesterday. Not only has this loss pushed Chelsea down to 5th position in
the league, but coach AVB has also conceded that his primary target now is to ensure Chelsea
challenge for a top 4 finish.

Luis Suarez's souring relationship with English football may open the door to a move to Serie A
giants Juventus, reports from Italy suggest.
Italian outlet calciomercato suggest that Juventus are willing to offer the perturbed Liverpool
forward a route out of the Premier League, as they consider alternatives should they fail in their
attempts to lure Arsenal's Robin Van Persie to the club.

Italian newspaper Gazzetto dello Sport have been backed into issuing a kinda sorta apology after
a caricature of Mario Balotelli imagined as King Kong swatting flying footballs away from the top
of Big Ben was published in Monday's edition following Italy's win over England the night
before.

England are out of Euro 2012 after losing on penalties to Italy in the quarter-finals. After
Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney scored their penalties, Ashley Young smashed his penalty against
the crossbar before Ashley Cole took a tame penalty which was an easy save for Buffon.

Young lifted his penalty, with Buffon getting nowhere near it, so it's puzzling as to why he
felt the need to hit it so hard.

England are out of Euro 2012 after losing on penalties to Italy in the quarter-finals. After
Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney scored their penalties, Ashley Young smashed his penalty against
the crossbar before Ashley Cole took a tame penalty which was an easy save for Buffon.

Young lifted his penalty, with Buffon getting nowhere near it, so it's puzzling as to why he
felt the need to hit it so hard.

A three loss start to the 2012 Major League Soccer regular season was not lost on Philadelphia
Union fans last week and they made themselves heard through boos directed toward head coach Peter
Nowak prior to the start of last week's scoreless draw with the Vancouver Whitecaps.

The Union's front office has recognized the importance of results as well, a source with
knowledge of internal discussions told the Brotherly Game.

To paraphrase a quote from the end of "Band of Brothers" - 'It's been a long season; it's been a
tough season'.

Maybe I'll have deeper thoughts on this as the next couple of weeks go by, but, for now, here's a
list of the best and worst moments of the last few months. Let's get the horrible stuff out of the
way first.

It was disappointing to say the least wasn't it. We were looking for a positive reaction after a
traumatic week and being honest we never got what we were looking for. It's been a long time since
I heard the amount of boos around the ground as Chelsea walked off at half time. To be fair, they
were exactly right and were well deserved.

Andy Carroll's return to Newcastle went about as bad as he probably feared on Sunday. Not only
did Fernando Torres, the man Liverpool sold for a tidy Â£50 million before quickly spending the
majority of it on Carroll, score for Chelsea the day before, but Newcastle won 2-0, with their new
No.

When the final whistle blew on Saturday afternoon, we heard just a few boos from some of our fans,
Â and the lads didn't look happy when they left the field. Fabricio Coloccini manger thinks he's
getting back to his best They knew, as the fans knew, that home games against sidesÂ fighting Â
against relegationÂ have to [.

Football is a funny old sport. The sharks were out circling Wenger and Arsenal before this match
with so many negative articles written, admittedly many here on this blog. Spurs had outwitted
Arsenal according to Amy Lawrence and there was no escaping some of the salient points she
made.

There's something in the air at The Emirates Stadium. Arsenal Football Club has had a difficult
2012 so far, and patience for some, at least is starting to wear thin, leading to a protest that
has brought puzzled expressions from elsewhere. At this lunchtime's match against Blackburn Rovers
in the Premier League, a group of supporters plans to place black bin bags on seats at the ground
prior to the match.

At half-time yesterday Arsenal left the pitch to a chorus of boos. 2-0 down against Aston Villa,
it looked as if we were heading for a fourth January defeat. We hadn't played particularly badly,
to be fair, but got caught out twice in ways we really shouldn't have.

Three goals in seven second half minutes that's all it took for Arsenal to win a game in which
they were otherwise unimpressive. While the comeback was miraculous and the result crucial, many
problems still remain.

As has been the case for the last month or so, Arsenal started at a pedestrian pace.

Unfair on Arshavin, Unfair on Arsenal FC (By S.H) The home stadium erupted in loud BOOS in protest
over Wengerâ€˜s decision to substitute Oxlade-Chamberlain for Andrey Arshavin. Even Robin van
Persie appeared to show his dissent over the manager's decision. The Ox had played a marvellous
game, and I too, was disappointed to see him [.

United made it Manchester 2-0 North London in the second of Sunday's super-duper
all-singing-all-dancing encounters, beating Arsenal 2-1 at the Emirates to whittle City's lead at
the summit of the Premier League back down from six points to three.

It's interesting that even this morning the focus appears to be on a controversial substitution
when the bigger issue is the fact we've just lost our third league game in a row, taking our total
of defeats in the league this season to eight.

When Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's number went up in the 74th minute many of the 60,000 at the
stadium made it quite clear what they thought of the decision.

Arsenal slumped to a 2-1 defeat at home to Manchester United as boos rang out after Arsene Wenger
inexplicably substituted Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain with the scores at 1-1 The nippy and technically
astute youngster was having his best game in an Arsenal shirt and after much persistence from the
hosts, set up striker Robin Van Persie [.

David Luiz was AWOL as Villa took advantage of Chelsea's non-existent central defense to first
slip in Steve Ireland, then Stilyan Petrov, and finally Darren Bent. The last two came within
minutes of each other towards the end of the match. Stamford Bridge erupted in boos.

The Rest

After just a few days in the job, it appears to already be open season on Rafa Benitez. Sir Alex Ferguson mocked the Spaniard for being 'very lucky' at landing the job and now footage has emerged of old foe Jose Mourinho landing a blow just for good measure. In the build up to the [...]

A quite, considered hush fell over Upon Park about ten minutes into the second half of West Ham
Uniteds match against Reading yesterday afternoon. As the visiting team dispatched their third
goal, a penalty kick from Ian Harte after a clumsy tackle by Abdoulaye Faye in fifteen minutes
either side of half-time and extended their lead to three-one, it was as if this was the collective
moment of realisation for their supporters that, having been there or thereabouts for most of this
season, the possibility of thereabouts being the sum total of their forty-six league matches us
starting to become rather more of a likelihood.